Poolhouse Coffee Opens in the City Baths

Luke Taylor and Jen Nguyen are the owners of Poolhouse Coffee, a new cafe tucked beneath the Melbourne City Baths.

It’s particularly a win for RMIT students, who only have a few cafes on campus to flock to.

Poolhouse doesn’t have a full-blown menu, but there are a couple of ready-made lunch options, including Vietnamese baguettes filled with crispy pork or lemongrass chicken or rice-paper rolls. There are also cronuts, doughnuts and sweet pastries from Rustica Sourdough.

Taylor designed the space, in collaboration with his furniture and art company Interspace. The process was no easy task, with the steel chairs taking seven prototypes to get right and two weeks to bend into shape – which Taylor did himself.

Take a seat at the marble brew bar, or at the banquettes surrounded by palm fronds if you have more time to spare.